FORGOTTEN SISTERS by Cynthia Pelayo – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Forgotten Sisters by Cynthia Pelayo
Published by Thomas & Mercer on March 19 2024
Genres: Adult, ghost story, Horror
Pages: 298
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Cynthia Pelayo’s latest love letter to historical Chicago is infused with ghosts, fairy tales and an intriguing mystery, perfect for genre fans who love surprises.

Forgotten Sisters was such a unique reading experience, and I’m so glad I’ve finally read a book by Cynthia Pelayo. This is a weird, spooky ghost story with elements of historical fiction, mystery, horror, and even fairy tale lore, and I’m not sure how the author fused all these different genres together, but she did! I had some flashbacks to one of my favorite books last year, The September House, which is also a highly original haunted house story, so if you read and loved that book, I would definitely give Forgotten Sisters a chance.

The story takes place in Chicago and revolves around two sisters named Anna and Jennie Arbor. Anna and Jennie have inherited their Grandmother’s Craftsman bungalow, which sits at the edge of the Chicago River in the Ravenswood neighborhood. The sisters agreed to Grandmother’s odd request to live in the house together and never, ever sell it, but this has led to Anna in particular feeling lonely and stuck, unable to pursue any kind of life for herself. Other than hosting a podcast about Chicago’s haunted history and keeping the house spotless, Anna feels lost and wants nothing more than to fall in love. Jennie, on the other hand, revels in the seclusion and won’t allow strangers inside the house. 

But the outside world is starting to intrude. A body has just been pulled from the river near the sisters’ house, the fourth one in recent months. All the drowning victims have been young males, and so the detective on the case suspects they might have a serial killer on their hands. At the same time, Anna receives an intriguing email from a man named Peter, who is a big fan of Anna’s podcast The Chicago Vault, and they immediately hit it off. But Jennie has begun to act strange, and refuses to meet Peter or even consider that her sister deserves to be happy. And when Detective Kowalski knocks on the door, both girls realize their lives are about to change.

Right away the reader knows something is “off” with Anna and Jennie. They appear to be older, spinster-type women, unmarried and jobless. But no, Anna is twenty-three and Jennie is twenty-six, and their past has been marred by tragedy, after their parents drowned in the river during a freak accident. Both are still dealing with the trauma and not doing very well. Anna has occasional hallucinations, mostly involving water and drowning—which isn’t surprising considering where they live. Jennie appears to be mentally disturbed in some way. She dresses in old fashioned clothing and her speech is stilted and formal, and the only time she leaves the house is to go on long, rambling walks along the bank of the river—at night. Oh, and did I mention that their house is haunted? Strange noises permeate the rooms, and ghosts randomly appear on the stairs. There is the constant noise of a faucet dripping, and Anna is determined to locate and fix it, even if she has to tear up the walls to do so.

Then there’s Grandmother’s book of fairy tales, one of Anna’s most beloved possessions. Grandmother read them stories from the book as children, and Anna’s favorite was—and still is—The Little Mermaid. Pelayo weaves the tale into her story beautifully, and it’s almost as if Anna was living her own version of the story, casting herself as Ariel, the girl who wants nothing more than to leave her family home and make her own way in the world. The author includes fascinating history about the origins of The Little Mermaid as well. Forget the Disney version, the Hans Christian Andersen tale is bleak and gruesome and doesn’t end well for poor Ariel.

The mermaid’s tale also fits in with Pelayo’s water theme, which infuses every part of Anna’s and Jennie’s story. From the Chicago River, winding its way through the city, full of mysteries and dead bodies, to the ghostly water drip and overflowing bathtub in their house, to The Little Mermaid story and even mentions of tragic historical shipwrecks like the Titanic and the SS Easton, Forgotten Sisters is steeped in watery imagery.

Interspersed with the sisters’ chapters we meet Detective Kowalski and his partner Rodriguez, who are investigating the latest river drowning and are very interested in Anna and Jennie, since their house is close to the site where one of the recent drowning victims was found. I liked these chapters, which added a different perspective to the story, and even though the author doesn’t spend much time with them, it was enough to get a sense of their personalities.

Anna and Jennie are wonderfully weird characters, and although it was hard to connect with Jennie, who is just plain strange and bit scary, Anna is relatable, even though she’s a bit odd herself. She’s obsessed with the history of Chicago, and the story is full of interesting facts and stories about some of the less savory things in the city’s past. We learn about the Union Stock Yards (meat packing plant), the Hawthorne Works, the first company to make telephones, and the terrible tragedy of the SS Easton, none of which I had ever heard of before. 

But here is where the story faltered a bit for me. Pelayo gets caught up in all those interesting facts about Chicago, which resulted in lots of info dumps. The first chapter starts out with vivid descriptions of what a drowned body looks like, which I didn’t mind, except they went on, and on, and on. (Really, I just need to hear about how skin sloughs off a drowning victim once.) Later in the story, Anna and Peter decide to tour the old Union Stock Yards, and Anna tells Peter in detail about how animals were butchered and the body parts were thrown into the river. This went on for almost an entire chapter, and it was just too much. The only time this “info dump” style of relating facts worked for me was at the end, when Anna is narrating one of her podcast episodes. Don’t get me wrong, I loved reading about all the history (and much of it relates to the story, so it felt pertinent), but it would have worked much better in shorter bursts, and perhaps in snippets at the beginning of each chapter, rather than interrupting the flow of the story.

But aside from that, there is so much to love about Forgotten Sisters. There are a couple of epic twists at the end that I wasn’t expecting, and I thought they made the story even better. I had chills when I turned the final page, and I loved the way Pelayo brought all her story threads together in the end. Highly recommended for readers who are looking for something different.

Big thanks to Kaye Publicity and the publisher for providing a review copy.